


Where Have all the Flowers Gone

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:37:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That time Claire Novak turned on the television (spoilers for 7.01)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Have all the Flowers Gone

**Author's Note:**

> An anonymous submission written for Rory when they were talking about the season premier.

The first time Claire saw him, the tan stretch of his back, his hand was dipped in his pocket, which was where he had kept the coins he gave to the poor, to the homeless stretched out on park benches, huddled under newspaper. He was approaching a man on a street corner, homeless sign propped against his knees, a dirty starbucks cup between his ankles.

She pushed through the crowds, trying to reach him, to grip his hand and see if he were real—to see if it were really him.

There was a flash of silver and copper in his hand, struck just right with the sun, but Claire was too far away to even hear their dull scrap and clatter as they jangled together from palm to cup, and she sped up, kicked off her sandals so that her bare toes could grip the cement.

He straightened. In his hand, he held a crust of bread which he gave to the man before tossing another to a cluster of pigeons fluttering besides trashcans, picking at trash in the curb. They flurried around it, attacking it, and soon people swarmed around him, swallowing him in his inconspicuous trenchcoat.

By the time she arrived at the spot, he was gone, and Claire panted, looking around her, neck craned to the sun and sky till her vision spotted, and the man with the cup, legs curled under him, stared and stared into it, then at the piece of bread in his hand, a small smile on his face.

“Did he say anything?” Claire said.

“That he wasn’t without mercy. That he wasn’t without love.” He raised his eyes. “Crazy son of a gun probably the closest thing to an angel that I’ve ever seen.”

“Angels have no mercy,” Claire said. “They have no love. And they have no honor.” Castiel had told her that there were promises to be kept—that her father had made Castiel promise to keep his family safe.

Claire’s jaw ached as she bit down hard, as she bit down the prayer that scrabbled up her throat—come back you son of a bitch, I want my father back.

Because he was family, and he was gone, worn thin and ragged as some angel sling-shotted him round the universe and back again.

Her hands clenched into fists, pain welling into a dull ache at the pressure on the tender skin where Claire had pared her nails away to the raw quick.

She saw him again on the television at school—publicly smiting an organization that she didn’t recognize.

“Hey, Claire.”

Sometimes, scraps of language that weren’t English or Spanish cropped up in Claire’s head. Like Castiel had infused every bit of her—not just stitched celestial intent into her skin or glazed suffusing grace around her organs, but had scratched words onto her skeleton, programmed them into her brain, and sometimes they glinted so bright that her mind, raven-like, picked at it, lined her skull with those words that were too big for her mouth and maybe her soul.

He could have understood. She looked down at her paper and saw that she had written the word. She could have shown this to him and he could say—

Some kid threw a crumpled ball of paper at her head. “Isn’t that your dad?”

“No.”

The television was on when Claire came home, shoulders lined red from the weight of her book bag which wasn’t as heavy as it should be, remembering only the shaky cell-phone video of that being someone had sent the news.

It was on the tv now, and Amelia watched it—her lips a thin line, a plate dripping sudsy waters on the floor, splattering her feet with soap-flecked drops.

Claire let the door slam behind her.

The plate slipped from Amelia’s hands, hit the ground with a thud but not at the right angle to shatter. Amelia lunged for the tv, fumbling with the remote to change the channel, to turn it off. When the screen blacked out, she stood in front of it, arms wrapped around the walls of the set, breathing hard, eyes skittering from the plate to Claire, then she closed them, tip of her tongue between her lips.

Claire bent to pick up the plate, dried it, put it away.

“How was school?” Amelia asked.

“Useless,” Claire said.

Claire approached the television.

“Go do your homework,” Amelia said, not looking at Claire.

Claire frowned at her. Sometimes, she still thought about her eyes turning black. “I want to watch the news.”

Amelia’s throat worked up and down, and she shook her head. “Claire, don’t.”

“I’ll remember,” Claire said, her voice soft as she stared at the bits of her mother’s face that weren’t hidden by hair and and a downward glance. “I know I will.”

“There isn’t a way,” Amelia said. “He’s dead, Claire.”

Claire reached around Amelia and pushed the power button. Saw the familiar face, lips set so unfamiliarly, like a painter plagiarizing a bad replica. “That’s what you said last time.” And then he’d come back through the snow.

And she’d barely even had time to say hello because mother had sent her away up the stairs. Because she didn’t think she could handle seeing him again.

As if hearing him call her  _baby_  again, as if him smiling when she called him  _daddy_  could have been worse than what he had said to her that night in the snow.

Except it hadn’t even been him, then. She knew that now. Remembered Castiel saying it. Even when she hadn’t known, it hadn’t mattered. She hugged herself, pretended she was just that kid again clutching him so tight, smelling the strange smell of him that was snow and sweat and something else, something scorching, like a star dying, burning through the atmosphere, before landing hard against the ground, smoking and smoldering and not as bright as it once had been.

“There isn’t a way,” Amelia said again, voice high pitched and tense, vocal chords strung too tight.

“I remember. I remember that there are words that’ll take an angel away.”

“It wasn’t your memory,” Amelia said.

Claire sat on the couch. She didn’t care that it had frightened Castiel, the words, the idea of being unraveled from one’s vessel after filling and becoming so closely, seeping into the pores and the between spaces.

It would be so much messier if angels were flesh and blood.

“He said he was God,” a man on the tv said. He shuddered, eyes wide, and muttered the Lord’s prayer.

Amelia flinched beside her before disappearing into the kitchen, slamming dishes away and cupboards open and closed, so Claire turned up the volume until the speakers squeaked in protest.

 _Hey Castiel or God or whatever it is you’re calling yourself now?_  Claire waited, tongue pressed hard against her molar.  _You’re not my father. And you never could be as good a one._

The next time Claire saw him, he had already left. But it was a church, the one that Amelia and Claire and a lot of other people laughed at indulgently because they hated so many people.

Claire was indifferent—but the only thing that brought her close was the stained glass window.

God carried a cell phone now.

Her jaw worked back and forth as she stared at her feet, then glanced back towards the sidewalk. The press was already there, interviewing a woman.

“He was young,” she was saying. “And sexy.”

Claire frowned at her. Her pulse quickened, throbbing in the nails cut so close, at the beds buried in her palms. When the reporter left, Claire said, “He’s not, you know.”

“Not what?” the woman said.

Cement, broken up by the root of an overgrown tree full of bird song, jutted into ledges that threatened to trip those who were unaware of their surroundings. She kicked at it, and it hurt her toes. She kicked at it again, savagely, until the cement broke and crumbled, and she dropped to her knees—ground biting at her skin, at the plate of her knee-cap, like the church floors used to do—and picked up the biggest chunk should could find.

Something light and feather-soft brushed her shoulder, and her head jerked up, blinking away at the bright light of the sun.

“Do you know him?” the woman asked breathlessly, leaning over Claire.

“Yes,” Claire said as she rose to her feet, shaking off the woman’s hand.

But the woman stepped in front of her, neck jutting out, eyes wide and unblinking as she stared deep into Claire, her hand rising as if she wanted to touch her cheek. “Don’t,” Claire said.

The woman stopped. “You have his eyes,” she whispered.

Claire shoved the woman out of the way and strode towards the stained glass window, the lump of concrete heavy in her palm, gritty with dirt. “I don’t,” Claire said, hefting the rock, pulling her arm back like he had taught her all those years ago, feeling the weight of it. Grit slipped between her fingers. “I have my father’s eyes.”


End file.
